It was really interesting to visit I Knit London today, to knit on their sofa, drink their tea and meet Jane Brocket. I did pick up a copy of her book and it is beautiful. I shall look forward to reading it over the next while…

…after that I met up with PracticalPolly and we enjoyed The Affordable Art Fair together. The absolute highlight of the fair was meeting up with the Mundane Appreciation Week inventors, Claudia Figueiredo and Kayla Bell, whose talents were spotted by a curator during their graduate show at Oxford Brookes. At their stall we participated in their button-badge-making activities whereby the contents of ones’ pockets are turned into beautiful button badges. It’s a great way of turning old post-office receipts, obsolete umbrella cases and torn-out diary pages into personal adornments.

They have amassed quite a beautiful collection of button badges made in this way, including a range of envelope interior button badges and some badges made from the pages of office stationary catalogues. Erica Van Horn made a beautiful book some years back in Ireland, inventorying envelope interiors, and Mark Pawson has a great range of button badges taken from estate-agent magazines. I blogged a while back also about the caravan gallery whose work is yet another way of inventorying or documenting everyday reality and learned recently about a woman who is drawing her washing up everyday ‘because everyday it’s different’ which reminds me of the beautiful moment in the film Smoke, when we learn that every single day, the guy who owns the Tobacconist takes a photo of it ‘because it’s his little corner of the world.’

These strategies for valuing or affirming what is around us all the time are really interesting – especially when considered in the light of Jane Brocket’s book and much of the criticism that was leveled at it concerning its ‘unrealistically’ beautiful representations of everyday life.

As I see it there is a continuous imaginative line that runs through all these realms; drawing the washing up everyday is a creative strategy that affirms or values or makes beautiful what would otherwise be boring or just unconsidered. Making a badge out of the receipts, napkins and cloth scraps in my pockets is a way of turning junk into wearable joy. Making art out of junk-mail is another interesting way to re-engage us with what is otherwise meaningless, boring, overwhelming, unconsidered. Maybe photographing stuff in the home – like cakes that are made from sugar, butter, flour and eggs – is another way to just love our lives more. All these activities are based in some way on a process of noticing and responding to what surrounds us, and applying our creativity to it.

I’m interested in understanding more about affirmation and art.

I also discovered today at the affordable art fair that I have a certain weakness for art that features birds of any sort and I am planning many felted birds.